Fundamentals of the carnivorous diet

The carnivorous diet is probably one of the most controversial diets in existence, it is presented as a diet that breaks preconceived paradigms; all this under the thesis that most of the nutritional advice on which we are guided is essentially wrong.

With this diet, the dietary habits of our ancestors are used. It defends a diet based on meat and fish, which discards carbohydrates, as the main source of the problems of overweight and many diseases today.

As you can see, this diet is shown as the matrix of many others. Its ideas have been adapted to diets such as the low-carbohydrate or the Paleo diet.

Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates in this diet are totally forbidden. Although we have analyzed many diets that show strong restriction towards them, in the case of the carnivorous diet, the intake of them is intolerable. The defense to this thesis is that carbohydrates are the main source of weight gain, cause multiple diseases in the body and are not necessary, they are only the result of a series of bad dietary advice.

Plants

For the followers of this diet, plants are poison, literally, they defend that ingesting plants is poisonous for our organism, because they possess numerous toxins that can affect our organism.

This is a half-truth, plants have many toxins that are harmful to our health, but this does not mean that a salad will harm you, on the contrary, plants are essential in a balanced diet as we have explained above. These toxins are insignificant in moderate quantities.

Meat

Meat, as you may have guessed, is the food source par excellence for lovers of this diet. Practically any type of meat can be consumed. We can accompany it with eggs, seafood, lard, butter and cheese.

Food pyramid

If you are familiar with the subject, you will already know that the well-known food pyramid recommends carbohydrates, fruits, nuts, legumes and vegetables as the basis of any diet. Among the foods less recommended or more optional in their consumption are meats, fish and eggs. However, this diet inverts the pyramid and recommends the opposite.

Scientific content of this diet

As you may have noticed, up to this point we have not found a single foundation of this diet that has any logic from the science of nutrition. Technically it contradicts everything we know about nutrition. It proposes a diet extremely high in proteins and fats, which are mostly saturated. All this while eliminating the intake of vegetables, fruits and fiber. It seems to be a nonsense supported by thousands of followers.

However, there are already scientific studies that give the benefit of the doubt for this diet. Studies that have used samples of more than 2000 people, show more than surprising results for what we could expect from people who follow this type of diet.

The results shown range from the undoubted loss of fat combined with the maintenance of muscle mass, all this product to the decrease of calories and the increase of proteins. It causes ketosis, of which we have spoken previously, and all the benefits associated with it.

Recommendations

This diet is risky to say the least, we do not consider it a safe diet to recommend. The few studies that are available have shown interesting and very positive results, but only in the short term. The consequences of eliminating vegetables, fruits, fiber, nuts and legumes, to eat only meat as a permanent lifestyle, can be catastrophic in the long term.

We do not doubt that this diet is suitable for many people with certain problems and diseases. But for a healthy person, adopting this diet on a daily basis, without data to measure its long-term effects, is an unnecessary risk.

In the following points of this guide, we will analyze aspects that will help you to get into the particularities of this diet, from its deficiencies and excesses.